“I never knew any of that!” Sandy gasped. “How did anyone survive?”
“That in itself is something of a miracle,” confessed the therapist. “All of this helped shape the man you would know as your father. I want to return to Omaha Beach and D-Day. Sandy, did you know that your father’s best friend died in his arms that morning?”
“Oh dear God,” she moaned, her right hand now supporting her forehead as she looked toward the floor. “He never shared that with me,” she whispered.
“The death of his friend would have been bad enough, but because of the way it played out, your father believed the bullets that killed his friend were intended for him.”
“What does that mean?”
The therapist found the document she was looking for and turned the file around so Sandy could see it was written in her father’s handwriting. “… Once we made it out of the water, we were running for our lives across the beach for cover. Agno started on my left. I yelled, ‘Head to the right, Agno, toward the rocks!’ I pulled him in that direction and shoved him ahead of me. He took my place as we moved right, just a head of me. Not much later, maybe fifteen or twenty seconds, I saw his body quiver and his whole upper back was a deep red. He turned to look at me before he collapsed in my arms. I dragged him behind some rocks. I guess by then he was probably already dead. If I hadn’t pulled him, hadn’t told him where to head, it would have been me who got that bullet.”
The therapist peered at Sandy over her glasses. Her face had lost all its color, her eyes brimming with tears. “Are you aware that, many years later, your father struck a fifteen-year-old boy?”
“Yes, I remember. It happened in my father’s restaurant.”
“Do you know what triggered the incident?”
Sandy nodded. “The boy’s German accent.” In a moment of epiphany, she jumped from her chair with both hands cradling her face. “That’s it! That’s why he hated anything and everything to do with Germany.”
The therapist nodded. “Like most of his generation, your father didn’t differentiate between Nazis and all Germans. In his mind, Germans killed Agno. Sit down, Sandy, there’s more.” Sandy promptly sat down. “Have you ever heard of the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?”
“You mean PTSD?”
“Yes. Our World War Two vets weren’t immune to it, although back then they called it Battle Fatigue or Combat Neurosis. Most civilians knew it as shell shock. Sometimes Hollywood gets it fairly right. Have you seen the movie Patton?”
“I know what you are going to say,” she replied. “That is my husband’s favorite movie. Patton slapped a soldier and called him a ‘yellow bastard’ for trying to get out of combat duty.”
The therapist smiled and nodded. “Actually, we believe he had what we now call PTSD. Getting any veteran to admit to any suffering from any battlefield ailment that didn’t involve blood was and remains difficult. In their minds, if it didn’t bleed, it wasn’t a serious problem. They certainly weren’t going to admit to any type of mental or emotional disorder.”
“So you’re telling me my father had PTSD?”
She nodded. “He brought it home with him from overseas. Not all wounds are visible, Sandy. He didn’t see me enough to allow for a complete diagnosis, and he became angry when I even suggested the possibility. Admitting that he might be suffering from some type of mental or emotional disorder is not a weakness. It’s a casualty of war as real as any physical wound.” She slipped her glasses off her nose and played with the thin chain with her fingers. “But I would bet my license on the fact that your father suffered from PTSD. It got worse over time, and was especially pronounced later in his life.”
Sandy shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t my mother tell me this?”
“You’d have to ask her,” suggested the therapist. “I don’t know whether she knew the full extent of your father’s service, or what he told her. She had to have known there were problems, but, like all good wives of her generation, she supported her husband’s decision not to talk about it. Don’t forget,” she added, making a scissors with her right hand fingers, “she’s cut from the same cloth.”
Sandy sighed and looked out the window. It was some time before she spoke. “I really know very little about either of my parents.”
“Unfortunately,” the therapist replied, “That’s not unusual.”
“So how does PTSD show in a person?”
“You mean what are its symptoms?” asked the therapist. Sandy nodded. “There are many, and they vary widely. Some people have most or all of the symptoms. Others may only have one or two. PTSD often begins with bad, intrusive memories. Some have flashbacks of traumatic events that can last for a few seconds, several minutes, or even days. Most have what we would call nightmares about the traumatic event that refuses to leave them.”
“My father had nightmares, often,” replied Sandy. “I remember him waking up and screaming. I recall my mom trying to calm him. Now I know why.”
“Even those who don’t have regular nightmares often have trouble sleeping,” continued the therapist. “Most sufferers feel emotionally numb. That’s a way to avoid thinking about what happened to them. They often feel hopeless about the future, suffer memory problems, and have difficulty maintaining close relationships. Anger is another symptom,” she added. “In your father’s case, I know he had anger management issues and violent outbursts.”
“My dad had a lot of anger inside. What else?”
“As I said, it spans the gamut,” she admitted. “Some have overwhelming moments of guilt, or shame. There’s often self-destructive behavior—drinking too much, drug use. Some suffer from extreme depression, high startle response, and the most sad of all, many veterans suffering from PTSD take their own lives.”
“I don’t believe my father ever tried to kill himself,” replied Sandy, “but he had many of these symptoms.”
“Another rather different symptom is one particularly difficult to diagnose with vets of your father’s generation. All of them survived the Great Depression, which would certainly make hoarding understandable, with or without PTSD.”
Sandy stiffened and her hand flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry, did you say, ‘hoarding?’”
“Yes,” she replied. “Was your dad a hoarder? I am not talking about just saving a few things.”
“I know what you mean,” she shot back, nodding her head several times. Warm tears welled up in her eyes.
“I wish your father had come back to see me more often,” continued the therapist. “I can tell you this though, from the sessions I had with him and from other documents and notes in his file, I came to respect your father as a genuine American hero. He gave his country the best he had, and he paid a very high price. He left a piece of himself over there just as surely as if he’d lost an arm or a leg.”
Taking a Kleenex from the box offered by the therapist, Sandy dabbed her tears. “You said earlier my dad believed his friend was killed by bullets that should have struck him, is that right?”
“Yes. We often call it Survivor’s Guilt. There is absolutely no doubt that complicated your father’s PTSD.”
“He never talked about anyone from the war, at least not to me,” explained Sandy. “What did you say his friend’s name was? Arnie?”
She flipped through the folder again. “No, it was Agno. A-G-N-O. I don’t know if that’s a first name or a last. It could have been a nickname.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”
“I’m don’t think I ever heard my father mention anyone named Agno.”
The therapist looked at her clock and smiled. “This has been a strong and wonderful session, Sandy.” She walked her to the door. “With knowledge, comes understanding. Understanding ignites compassion.”
Thoughts tumbled and spun in her mind as she walked through the parking lot to her car. She had wasted years misjudging her father. He had done many things wrong—most or all of which were voluntary, but over whi
ch he did not have full control. She had never known him at all. She had allowed her benign but obstinate ignorance to hone her reality into an ugly lie.
“Daddy,” she cried, weeping now like a small child while gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what I was doing,” she sobbed. “I had no idea what you were going through … how you were suffering. I was selfish. I ignored your problems and only focused on mine. I’m sorry, so very sorry. Please forgive me.”
As she drove away, she could not get the therapist’s final words out of her mind: “With knowledge, comes understanding. Understanding ignites compassion.”
Chapter 21
“I’m done!”
Sandy’s voice echoed through the old pole barn.
Standing in the middle of the enormous structure, she turned a full circle surveying her accomplishment. The mountains of boxes, bags, and debris were gone. Other than bits of cardboard, frayed wads of packing tape, and the occasional candy wrapper, the barn was empty. Thick cobwebs still coated the walls in some places, and vines still grew out of the corners along the wall. They would soon be someone else’s problem.
“You think so?” asked Sam.
“Yes, I do,” she said without turning around. “I even finished with a few days to spare.”
Sam walked toward her from behind, his heavy black boots clicking loudly now that there was nothing inside to absorb the sound. He squatted down when he reached her side, and used his forefinger to doodle in the thin layer of dust and dirt coating the barn floor. “We’re on this earth to be servants to each other, Sandy,” he said, dragging his finger slowly in a broad semi-circle. “What you’re doing, what you’ve done for your father, is stepping into his place and finishing his work. You’re serving him and you’re almost finished.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Sam,” she replied. “Wait. Did you say ‘almost?’”
The left corner of his upper lip lifted in a half-smile. “Well, let’s just say it’s almost complete.”
“I went through everything,” she insisted. “Look around! I cleaned up his mess.”
“Indeed you have,” answered Sam. “You cleaned up his mess.”
“Is there something else I missed?” When Sam did not reply, she raised her eyebrows and snapped a finger. “Ah, you mean the tax liens. I am one step ahead of you, my friend. That horrible mess is fixed as well. Steve negotiated the original amount to less than half, and they removed all the penalties. We now have the money to pay it ourselves, and Steve volunteered.”
Sam rubbed his chin and grinned. “That must be a huge relief. But you have still only cleaned up his mess.”
Sandy turned her hands palm up. “I give up.”
“We all make messes of our lives to one degree or another,” he explained. “We hope we can straighten them out or clean up our mess before it’s too late, but sometimes,” he stood up and wiped the dust from his hands, “sometimes time runs out. Like a basketball game, the clock of life ticks off the seconds, the minutes, the hours, and the days. And when the buzzer sounds …”
Sandy frowned. “You are ruining my good mood, Sam.”
“The clock ended before your dad could do all this for himself. That can happen to any of us at any time. Young, old—it doesn’t matter. Our time in this life is limited.”
“Well of course it is,” shot back Sandy. “Who doesn’t know that?”
“Knowing is one thing,” Sam replied. “But who really believes their own time will be short?” He stared at her for a few seconds, just long enough to make her uncomfortable. “No one knows their time of departure.”
“Departure?” Sandy shook her head. “That’s an odd word. When we’re dead, we’re dead. “To ‘depart” implies you are going somewhere.”
“That’s right,” he continued. “Our bodies die but our souls go on. We all have to be prepared. Even under the best of circumstances, there will be work left undone.”
“My dad had no intention of cleaning up the barn,” she continued. “I believed he was busy creating messes for me to clean up. Now I find out he suffered from PTSD and it probably caused most of the problems he suffered after the war.” Sandy began walking slowly back to the front of the barn with Sam at her side. “I blamed him for everything that was wrong in our family, Sam. Everything. But everything wasn’t his fault. Most of it wasn’t. The problem was my own insensitivity and selfishness.”
“I don’t think you were selfish or insensitive,” Sam replied. “You didn’t understand, and your father couldn’t help his family understand. But of course, he probably had no idea what he was doing to himself or to his family. We all make mistakes large and small, Sandy. All of us. The only thing that matters is that when we do, and when we know, we change.”
“I understand that better now,” she admitted. “I so regret what I did. For so many years I treated him like he was nothing but a drunk and a bum.”
“And now what do you believe?”
“He left all this, and it is still a little confusing,” she confessed, “but now I know he left it for me.” A pensive look crossed her face. “Yes, I had a tough summer and a lot of stress, and my reward was having to dig through a huge barn, most of it crammed with countless boxes and bags of decaying leaves my dad had been saving—as a gift for me in his own”—Sandy struggled to find the right word—“his own … way.”
When Sam smiled, Sandy tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “What’s making you smile?”
“You may never think of all this as a reward,” he said, waving his hands in the air to take in the empty barn, “but you performed a wonderful and blessed service for your dad and saved your mother from her burdens—the barn, the tax lien, and the pain she carried about how and what you thought of your father.”
Sandy’s face slowly lit up, as if a sudden realization struck her. “He knew I would figure it out, but he was too ill to fully understand all of what he was putting me through,” she said slowly. “But my mother would never have figured it out, and we could not hire it done because strangers would never have figured it out, either.” She stopped and watched Sam’s smile grow larger. “I was the only one who could have done this.”
“The rewards that are the most important in life, aren’t of this earth.”
At that, Sandy fell silent. She walked along the far wall about halfway down the length of the barn before turning around to face him. “Do you believe there is a God, Sam?”
His gaze locked onto Sandy and drew her closer, step by step. “There is.” When she was a few feet from him, he continued. “When we first met, you asked, ‘Why would God do this to me?’ Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said with a firm nod of her head. “I still wonder that.”
“God doesn’t do things to people. The better question might be, ‘Why would God allow this to happen?’ Walk with me, Sandy.” Together they slowly made their way toward the front of the barn and from there, began walking around the perimeter, side by side. “God uses all things for His good purpose—if we open our hearts to see it. I think He used this barn and the giant, seemingly insurmountable, mess to do a great work within you.”
“Within me?” she asked.
“You’re not the same woman I met weeks ago. I believe this old warehouse, or pole barn as you call it, became your instrument of change.”
Sandy thought for a few moments before nodding in agreement. “I see that now. I never would have without you.” They continued walking, their footsteps echoing off the rough wooden sides of the barn. “Do you believe there is a heaven, Sam?”
He closed his eyes and smiled as if imagining a beautiful place. “As sure as I’m standing here, there’s a Heaven.”
“Are you here” She turned away so Sam could not see the tears welling up in her eyes. “My husband and my kids think I’m ‘emotionally exhausted’—that you are a figment of my imagination. Tracey says I’m hallucinating.”
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“What do you think?”
She hesitated. “I think you are here.” Her words lacked confidence.
“I didn’t come here for them. It doesn’t matter what they think.”
“You came for me?” By this time the tears were running down her cheeks. “You didn’t know me.”
The mouth of the stranger who had become a friend transformed into a wide smile. “All I can tell you is that one day I was running on a beach, and the next day I was here. Time is relative. I am here now, but not only for you.”
Blood rushed to her face. “Then who else are you here for?”
“I am here for him.”
Sandy furrowed her brow as her questioning eyes met his. “You’re here for Steve?”
“I’m performing a service for a friend. I’m here for Duke.”
“Daddy?” Here voice trembled, the word nearly catching in her throat. She hadn’t called her father that since she was twelve years old.
“Your dad performed a service for me that I could not perform for myself,” replied Sam. “He did it with a joyful heart.”
“Wait!” she responded sharply, as if the spell was broken. “I’ve never seen you around town. How did you know him?” Her eyes narrowed. “Something doesn’t add up.”
Sam chuckled softly. “Not everything adds up in human measurements. Time is relative, as is age. In this life, you need reference points to measure both. But there is a place where those reference points are meaningless. The soul has no beginning and no end. There is no need to measure. I know you can’t understand that now. But you will. Your father was a kind and gentle man. He loved his family. He loved you with a love that is immeasurable.”
As she stared into Sam’s eyes, all the important and memorable moments she had spent with her father scrolled through her mind. “What’s happening to me, Sam?” Her heart raced and the blood pounded in her temples. “What did you do?
“I’ve done nothing. You’ve done it all yourself. You are on a beautiful journey. I’m here to help you on your way. You’re loved deeply by many, Sandy,” explained Sam. “Someday you will come to know that you are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Don’t be too self-critical. Your students, your friends, your family … you are loved. You make a positive difference in the lives of everyone you touch.”
The Final Service Page 12